DIY & Crafts

How to Make a Beautiful Homemade / DIY Pizza Oven

by craftmin | December 12, 2017

(1) Hot Red Brick DIY Pizza Oven

When Julie envisioned her pizza oven, she was a DIY newbie. She bought two books and gave herself a deadline – her 40th birthday. First it rained nearly every day, second she didn’t have any DIY experience, and third she did not have any DIY experience. What she had was a lot of smarts and some luck.

First, she made a mess out of the cement mix when making her base. But she got over it and soon got the hang of it. Second, Julie used a hinge that used to be part of a shopping trolley to determine the perfect radius for her dome over. Talk about a flash of inspiration! Third, she ditched the hinge and used half boards and lots of halved bricks and finally finished her dome. And, guess what? Julie used a thick sheet of polythene on the base and solved the future problem of gritty sand getting onto her pizza. All’s well that ends well. Her pizza also tastes fantastic.

(2) Moveable DIY Pizza Oven

When Phil decided to make his basic pizza oven, he made it so basic that he built it on a wooden pallet so he could move it in case he needed to. In theory though, more than in practise, because at the end of the project that pizza oven is going to weigh half a ton! But it’s good to still have that option. Just made from basic bricks and cement, the oven is also great for slow roasting huge chunks of meat.

Phil laid cement over the wooden pallet and built the oven over it. One tip Phil shared is to make a small fire to dry the oven from inside before using it. He also used two kinds of sand for the construction: fine sand (for detailed work) and sharp sand (general purpose sand usually containing small amounts of aggregate in the mix).

(3) Cob Oven DIY Project

When husband and wife team Dave and Robin decided they wanted their own outdoor pizza oven, they went through all the research and looked up a ton of options. But the options they found were too expensive, $7,000 – $15,000 is too expensive even for homemade delicious pizza. Brick was out for lack of masonry skills until they stumbled on a very ancient method. They made the oven out of clay and sand, also known as adobe, and then insulated it with COB (clay, sand, and straw). Sounds primitive, right? Well, it turned out to be the perfect answer to what they wanted – an affordable outdoor oven that could cook authentic pizza.

A lot of hard work was put in and Dave even attended a cob-oven building workshop! Then they dug a 5-foot hole on the ground for the oven, did a lot of mud work, and built the oven base stone by stone. A truly exhilarating experience.

(4) Grills Have Second Lives

It might not be a looker but it cooks pizza really well. When intrepid DIYer mdub decided to make a pizza oven he knew he wasn’t going to go all out with a wood-burning one. He just wanted his pizza cooked in five minutes. His solution? He got a hooded 2-burner gas barbecue grill from Ebay and modified it for a pizza oven while still using it as a barbecue grill.

He did a lot of scouring on Ebay for the parts he needed and he made a dome for his pizza oven. His tricks included using two bent metal rods as the dome supports, using oven tile, and doing a lot of planning on paper before he even started to do the dome. All in all, everything worked out and he is still enjoying his pizza.

(5) Make it Minimalist

Basically, John’s DIY pizza oven is bare bones but it does the job with its high heat and simplicity. Using brick and an angle iron, the brick oven goes over a propane grill. John also uses a pizza stone and with the very high heat of the oven he is able to create an amazing crust for his homemade pizzas.

(6) Building Naturally

Sigi Koko wanted to keep her garden natural so wanted to make sure that she also builds natural. It was not surprising to see her post about making her own COB oven – all natural, right in her own backyard. First, she suggests that you get Kiko Denzer’s Build Your Own Earth Oven book (Ananda above also recommended it).

Second, decide what size you want your DIY pizza oven to be and then design your oven. Gathering the materials ight be a little harder, but look up sources online or check by word of mouth. Have some friends over when you do the mud work because it’s always fun to work with clay but it takes a while. Later on, bribe them with your very own pizza party while you eat the fruits of your labor. Check out also this Pizza Herb Garden you can plant to accompany all that pizza you plan to make and eat.

(7) Roundboy Outdoor Pizza Oven

Having a pizza oven built was way out of Debbie’s and her family’s budget. So they thought, why not at least partly build their own? That’s what they did, with Mike stacking cinder blocks one on top of the other (he used a special adhesive) and then ordering a Roundboy pizza oven.

Everything sounds great? Well, for the initial delivery the freight company broke the oven into pieces. The second time around, the oven thankfully arrived intact. Everything was working and then Mike decided to cover the cinder blocks with granite and stone for a truly beautiful oven.

(8) The Ultimate Brick Outdoor DIY Pizza Oven

Because B and L are expert DIYers, their ultimate brick oven cost less than $2000. Yup, masonry was no problem for them but it did take them two years to completely build since they could only build during their free weekends and never during the winter. B did say that if you work on it for 8 hours a day, one month will suffice or maybe two months at the most.

(9) Earthly Delights DIY Pizza Oven

Ananda finds earth ovens aka Cob pizza oven a real earthly delight – simple and useful with very rewarding results. She attended a workshop and participated in the building of two…yes two portable earth ovens that you can literally carry around.

It takes a longer firing time, but it’s much cheaper and lighter than usual pizza ovens. The mud work was also a fun and engaging process, and she used glass jars and vermiculite for insulation for the oven’s flooring.

(10) Wood-fire Pizza Oven for an Outdoor Kitchen

Using cement for flooring, staggered cinder blocks and cement in the holes to form the base, this beautiful pizza oven looks a lot harder to make than it actually was. The cinder block/cement base was later covered with bricks to make it look more appealing and the oven was ordered after finishing the basic concrete countertop.